Far Cry: New Dawn is set to launch this week for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. With so much excitement stirring around the impending launch of this latest entry in Ubisoft's long running, first-person shooter series, we've compiled a series of news stories, features, and gameplay videos highlighting all the details you need to know about the game.What do you think about Far Cry: New Dawn? Are you going to pick it up? Let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, check back often as we update this feature with our full review, as well as guides to help you overcome its most difficult challenges.What You Need to KnowFar Cry: New Dawn is a standalone spin-off that also serves as a narrative sequel to Far Cry 5 set 17 years after the events of the game. After a nuclear exchange has devastated the land, a colony of survivors attempts to rebuild civilization in Hope County. However, their efforts are threatened by a group of bandits known as the Highwaymen. With few options left, the survivors form an alliance with New Eden, the remnants of the antagonistic cult from Far Cry 5. Rather than assume control of the protagonist of Far Cry 5, you actually play as a completely new character.Release Date And PriceFar Cry: New Dawn is set to launch on February 15 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. As a series spin-off, it's actually priced at the budget price tag of $40. If you're looking to purchase the game, be sure to refer to our pre-order guide, which offers details on the various editions. Our ImpressionsWe've had several opportunities to play Far Cry: New Dawn since its announcement. Below you can find links to features covering the game in further detail, as well as our impressions of how it plays.General Impressions: Far Cry New Dawn Marks The 'Beginning Of A New World'--Here's Everything We Know -- We chatted with Ubisoft Montreal about the post-apocalyptic follow-up to Far Cry 5, discussing its story, co-op play, and its latest dog friend.Gameplay Impressions: Far Cry: New Dawn Is Now A Fallout-Esque Apocalyptic RPG -- Check out our preview detailing how the game is shaping up.Developer Q&A: Far Cry: New Dawn - Ubisoft Talks Nuking The USA And Female Villains -- We chatted with New Dawn's Narrative Director about perceptions of Far Cry, the new villains, and just how long they've had this pink post-apocalypse planned.GameplayAbove you can find gameplay footage of Far Cry: New Dawn's latest addition to the formula, Expedition Missions. These are special missions that let you fight the Highwaymen in entirely new areas outside of the familiar territories of Hope County. Info from Gamespot.com

Battlefield 5 is kicking off its new free co-op mode Combined Arms this week. Launching as part of the Lightning Strikes update, this mode lets players team up with up to three friends for eight PvE missions. The four key objectives span across four maps.DICE says Combined Arms is meant to be a good way for players to practice together before throwing down in the much more competitive multiplayer, and it has variable difficulty settings and loadouts so you can get your time in with the gear of your choice. Plus it gives you Company Coins in any event, so you're always grinding toward unlocks.The studio promises more Combined Arms missions will be coming in later updates. In addition, the multiplayer mode Rush is coming back for a limited time on March 7. This update also includes a host of other quality-of-life tweaks, like increasing the speed when dragging allies to safety. The full patch notes are extensive.Publisher EA recently shared a round of financial results, calling it a "difficult quarter." One reason for that was that Battlefield 5 missed expectations. It sold 7.3 million units, but EA had projected more. CEO Andrew Wilson chalked up the disappointing sales to the marketing campaign failing to grab players, a tough competitive environment against other fall games and the free-to-play Fortnite, and the decision to focus on Battlefield 5's single-player mode instead of pushing harder to complete its Firestorm battle royale mode.By comparison, Activision's Black Ops 4 didn't have any single-player component and had its own battle royale mode, Blackout, ready on launch day. Firestorm won't be ready until March. In the meantime, EA has just launched Apex Legends from Respawn, a free-to-play battle royale game that has quickly become a massive success.Info from Gamespot.com

The long-awaited Metro Exodus is releasing this week for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Announced at E3 2017, it's hard to believe the game is finally coming out. After all, the last Metro game we got was 2013's Metro: Last Light. To help you prepare for Metro Exodus, we've compiled all of our essential news stories, features, and gameplay videos highlighting all the details you need to know about the game.Are you excited for Metro Exodus? Let us know in the comments below. Otherwise, be on the lookout for our full review in the days ahead, as well as guides detailing how to better survive the grueling challenge of its post-apocalyptic world.What You Need to KnowWhile Metro Exodus is the third installment of the Metro series, its premise makes for a solid jumping-on point for newcomers. Set two years after the events of previous game, it continues the adventures of series protagonist Artyom who flees the Metro in Moscow to embark on a continent-spanning journey with the Spartan Rangers--a battle-hardened unit of elite soldiers that roam the wasteland.Unlike previous games in the series, Metro Exodus features a far more open design with larger maps to explore. While you'll be spending a lot of time in these sprawling sandboxes, you'lll also be thrown into the more linear yet tense, claustrophobic environments the series is known for.Release DateMetro Exodus releases on February 15 for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. If you're looking to purchase the game, be sure to refer to our pre-order guide, which offers details on the various editions.Our ImpressionsWe got the chance to play Metro Exodus several times at events since its announcement at E3 2017. Below you can find links to features detailing our thoughts and feelings about how the game plays.General Impressions: Metro Exodus Makes Strides Into A More Challenging Open World -- Here we discuss our first experiences playing Metro Exodus and how much the series has grown since Last Light.Developer Q&A: How Metro Exodus Expands Horizons Without Going Fully Open World -- We had the opportunity to speak Metro Exodus' global brand manager about the game's mechanics, story, and general influences.Pre-Launch Impressions: Metro Exodus Feels Best When It Sticks To Its Roots -- Check out our preview detailing our experiences playing a near-finished build of the game.GameplayAbove you can find gameplay footage of Metro Exodus' biggest level, the Caspian Desert. We spend a half hour exploring this open area, taking down mutants and discovering more about what happened to the world outside the Metro. If you're curious to see footage we captured alongside a Metro Exodus developer Jon Bloch, be sure to check out the gameplay demo we recorded during E3 2018.PC RequirementsIf you're looking to play Metro Exodus on PC, you'll likely want to know how demanding it is. Lucky for you, we've gathered the full list of what you'll for each level of performance in our in-depth PC specs article. Info from Gamespot.com

For any voice actor, joining the Walt Disney Animation Studios roster of talent seems like it should be a dream come true. After all, you've become part of a fabric of movies that includes iconic titles like Cinderella, Pinocchio, and Robin Hood. For Alan Tudyk, who has now appeared in six Disney animated films--along with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story--it was another movie that drew him to the studio growing up.Speaking to GameSpot to promote the Blu-ray and digital release of his latest Disney feature, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Tudyk spoke about his love for The Little Mermaid, where he found inspiration for his character KnowsMore in the latest Wreck-It Ralph film, and what's it's like being in the Disney pantheon of films. Additionally, Tudyk opened up about his latest project, DC Universe's Doom Patrol and creating his own take on the iconic villain The Joker in the upcoming Harley Quinn animated series.Ralph Breaks the Internet is available on digital now, with the Blu-ray and DVD following on February 26. The released includes a range of special features that explore the Easter eggs hidden throughout the film, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie, and deleted scenes.GameSpot: What were your Disney movies when you were growing up?Alan Tudyk: Although I was too old to love it as much as I did, I think [The] Little Mermaid, man. Little Mermaid.GameSpot: Really?Tudyk: I loved the French cook because through the whole movie you've got all these fish who are your friends, and then you meet this guy who's like, "Les poissons, les poissons," and he's chopping them into pieces right in front of you. It was so shocking and hysterical because he's very funny, singing about killing them. It's just, it's a great musical.GameSpot: I have to believe for a voice actor [that] Disney is the gold standard. They are the history of animation from beginning to end. What is it like to know that you're a part of that fabric; that you exist in this world where you are multiple Disney characters?Tudyk: Yeah. It's hard to comprehend. I have to step out of it and think of myself watching Little Mermaid. Like, had I met the guy who played Sebastian, how much that would have floored me. Although, there's also a little bit of, when you meet the people... Because I did end up seeing him in an interview. I was like, "That's Sebastian?" I wanted more from that. I wanted him to be funnier than he is.You get that with kids. There's a certain age that they believe in the characters; they truly believe they exist. So if you do a KnowsMore character, "Oh, hello. How are you?" They look at you like... they get confused, then there's this betrayal that goes across their face, like they've been lied to, which they have been, and they don't understand what it is yet.GameSpot: KnowsMore, it's a strange character, because, in a way, you're playing Google.Tudyk: Yes.GameSpot: Obviously, the design of the character, I'm assuming helps in building your vision of the character, but how do you find that character and that voice and how you're going to play it?Tudyk: Well this one was interesting. [Co-director] Rich [Moore] asked me before I came in. He said, "Put him in the neighborhood of Truman Capote." So he put me there, and Truman Capote sounds like this. Close'ish. I don't do good [impressions]. But it's sort of him. It becomes somewhere between him and Droopy Dog, but he's very nice. "Oh, isn't that interesting." So we just played around with it from there and that's how it ended up. That's how we ended up with who KnowsMore is, but looking at his picture, he's little and he's got those glasses and "Isn't that interesting." He just became... That's how he was born. He lives in the same neighborhood as Droopy Dog and Truman Capote. He's at the house between those two.GameSpot: When it comes to something like an animated film, obviously, KnowsMore has a lot of dialogue, because he is searching a lot of things. How closely do you have to stick to the script versus playing around with it?Tudyk: Right. You get to play a lot. And having the relationship with Rich, having done Wreck-It Ralph the first, we got to just kick around some ideas. I think in the first recording, the "Isn't that interesting. Hm, isn't that interesting," we started playing around with that; it became a thing that he always said. I think in terms of, or the way that I improv is, I need to know where I am and what's happening. I always try to improv about the actions taking place, the world that's involved. And they [say], "Go with that, go with that, go with that." They'll let you go off on a tangent. That's part of the fun of doing animation.GameSpot: I've also seen the first two episodes of Doom Patrol.Tudyk: You have? You've seen more than me!GameSpot: Mr. Nobody is not the nicest guy to be around. How do you approach being the antagonist versus the good guy or the hero of the story?Tudyk: He's interesting. I mean, a lot of his actions are awful, so that's good because that acts for you... You read these scripts and you're like, "Really? Wow." The one that we just... I just came from there. I just got in town this morning from Atlanta where we're shooting. Playing evil, you're kind of just playing who he is, who's this fractured individual. [Grant Morrison's run is what] they based it on. He's got such a wild brain. And Mr. Nobody, one thing he told me when we talked on the phone before I started... Just the idea of Dada, which is what the character gets in. Everything means nothing. It's all perspective. Nothing is anything. Anything is nothing. If you found a dollar on the ground, what is that worth? If you found it and then you realized the dollar is signed by Andy Warhol and it's a piece of found art, now what is it worth? Then you found out that it's a forgery, what's it worth now? Then you found out the person who forged it was Picasso, now what's it worth?What changed? Nothing changed, physically, but it all changed several times. Like, "What is that? That's nobody. Nobody's in that." So try to drive yourself crazy in that world. That's what Mr. Nobody is.GameSpot: The last thing I wanted to touch on is, you're about to bring voice to another super iconic character: the Joker. How do you find that? When you say, "the Joker," everyone has a voice in their head, whether it's Mark Hamill, Jack Nicholson, or Heath Ledger. How are you putting your spin on that and who are you looking to for inspiration on it?Tudyk: I don't know. Pieces of all of them, really, I guess. This is the first time I'm talking about it. It got released by [Diedrich Bader]. I don't know. I think the main thing that's different is it's my voice; I can hear me in it.But I grew up watching... My first exposure to the Joker was Caesar Romero, and I know there's a little Caesar Romero in it. There's a couple, "Whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo whoo's," that I've heard that it was like, "Uh, I know what that is," where he taunts the badge. I can't wait for people to hear it. I do a couple of voices in it. It's great.GameSpot: Who else?Tudyk: I also play Clayface, who is a former actor who, some accident and he turns into this clay guy and he can be anybody, but he's a moron, and he's not good at it. It's a very funny cartoon. There's like, "Okay, Clayface, go over there and deliver these packages and distract them." "Yes. A mailman. What's my inspiration?" "Just deliver the package." "Ah, daddy was a mailman! You didn't love me." He's coo-coo, so there's a lot of fun stuff going on.GameSpot: That's awesome.Tudyk: Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait to see Doom Patrol. I'm so jealous of you seeing it!GameSpot: It's very, very good.Tudyk: Timothy Dalton is so badass. It's so great to work with him. I'm working with him a lot, so when I'm working, I'm working with Tim, and I so enjoy it. I so enjoy it. He's a true Shakespearean actor and it's just like, "Wow." That's one of the things that sci-fi allows, at times when you just get to have these heady one-on-ones like, "What's the world about? What is f***ing existence about?" Actually playing with those ideas.Ralph Breaks the Internet is available on digital now, with the Blu-ray and DVD following on February 26.Info from Gamespot.com

Xbox One's backwards compatible library continues to expand. Microsoft's Major Nelson announced that another pair of Xbox 360 games are playable on the current-gen console beginning today, February 12: The King of Fighters XIII and Orcs Must Die.Both of this week's BC titles originally debuted in 2011. The King of Fighters XIII is one of the latest installments in SNK's long-running fighting game series; at the time of its release, it was considered a return to form for the franchise, addressing many of the elements that made its predecessor, The King of Fighters XII, disappointing. GameSpot awarded it an 8.5/10 in our original King of Fighters XIII review.Orcs Must Die, meanwhile, is a humorous tower defense/action game, in which players assume the role of a battle mage who must fortify their castle with spikes and all other manner of traps to defend it against an incoming army of orcs. While the game lacks any multiplayer options, we thought it was enjoyable and gave it a 7.5/10 in our original Orcs Must Die review.If you still have a physical copy of either game laying around, you can simply insert the disc into your Xbox One to initiate a download and begin playing. If you've previously purchased either game digitally, they'll automatically appear in the Ready to Download section of the My Games and Apps menu.Microsoft has been steadily rolling out new BC games on a near weekly basis since the feature was first introduced. The previous batch included Lego Batman 2 and Port Royale 3. You can see all of the backwards compatible games to date in our full list of Xbox One BC games.Info from Gamespot.com

Activision Blizzard, publisher of Call of Duty, Overwatch, and Candy Crush, has announced significant layoffs. Employees were notified of the cuts today, with people at Activision, Blizzard, and mobile game company King affected.Activision has also detailed its financial performance for the forth quarter of 2018 and, as part of this, noted that it "will increase development investment in its biggest franchises, enabling teams to accelerate the pace and quality of content for their communities and supporting a number of new product initiatives." It also cited that the number of developers that will be working on "Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone and Diablo in aggregate will increase approximately 20% over the course of 2019."However, this greater investment, it says, will be funded by "de-prioritizing initiatives that are not meeting expectations and reducing certain non-development and administrative-related costs across the business"--referring to the layoffs. In its financial call, COO Coddy Johnson said there would be an eight percent reduction in headcount at Activision Blizzard. With nearly 10,000 employees by the company's last count, this amounts to nearly 800 people losing their jobs.Company CEO Bobby Kotick, said that, while Activision Blizzard's "financial results for 2018 were the best in our history," the it "didn’t realize our full potential." As a result, the company has made leadership changes designed to "enable us to achieve the many opportunities our industry affords us, especially with our powerful owned franchises, our strong commercial capabilities, our direct digital connections to hundreds of millions of players, and our extraordinarily talented employees.”In a statement acquired by Kotaku, Blizzard president said "staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with [the company's] current release slate," which has necessitated the need to scale down. Although the layoffs are currently isolated to the US business, Brack indicated that other regional offices will also be evaluated in the future and could also be impacted, "subject to local requirements."Brack's message to Activision Blizzard's reportedly states "a comprehensive severance package," in addition to job assistance and a profit-sharing bonus will be offered to those at Blizzard that are being affected by the layoffs.Amidst these layoffs, Activision Blizzard has increased the dividends it is paying to its shareholders by nine percent from 2018. At the same time, it has authorized a two-year stock repurchase program. These measures are intended to soften potential impact on Activision Blizzard's stock price, but paints a negative picture when placed alongside the layoffs.Info from Gamespot.com

As part of Activision Blizzard's earnings report, the company announced that a new Call of Duty game is coming out in 2019.Activision management offered some very high-level insight on the game, saying it will appeal to veterans and newcomers alike. The company added that the game is a "great step forward" for the franchise, going on to say that it's rooted in Call of Duty's history, which suggests it will be a sequel to an existing sub-brand.Also during the call, Activision management confirmed the new Call of Duty will feature some kind of campaign, which is notable because Black Ops 4 did away with a traditional campaign. Whether or not the new Call of Duty returns to the traditional campaign remains to be seen, however. Whatever the case, Activision also confirmed the new game will have a "huge expansive multiplayer world," as well as "fun co-op gameplay." More details are expected in the coming months.Johnson said Activision has "high expectations" for the game, though it's predicting that sales of the mysterious game will be lower than 2018's Black Ops 4. The Black Ops franchise is historically the best-performing Call of Duty sub-brand, so a year-over-year downturn in sales is expected.2019's Call of Duty is rumored to be Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward. The series is on a three-year, three-studio development schedule, so 2019's title is expected to come from Infinity Ward, the studio that created the Modern Warfare series.As for Activision's earnings report, the biggest news was Activision laying off around 800 employees, or about eight percent of its workforce. The job losses will affect teams at Blizzard, Activision, and King, in a number of non-game-development roles.Info from Gamespot.com

Far Cry: New Dawn sees Ubisoft's open-world FPS series head into the post-apocalypse, where society has fallen after the events of Far Cry 5. One of the game's new features are Expeditions, a series of self-contained missions that take place outside of the main setting of Hope County, and around various US-based locations.Expeditions are snatch-and-grab affairs; your goal is to sneak into an enemy-occupied region, steal a package with valuable crafting materials, and get to an extraction point as the whole base comes chasing after you. One particular mission is dubbed "Government Plane Wreck", and involves sneaking into an enemy-occupied base established in the body of an enormous military aircraft. You can see a narrated walkthrough of the mission in the video above.Of course, it wouldn't be a perfectly shady government plane without a few secrets, and it doesn't take much for fans of stealth games to you to quickly realize that the government plane in question is the C-147B Paladin from the Splinter Cell series, which served as the mobile HQ for the special ops unit, Fourth Echelon.But it goes further, of course. Throughout the plane, you can find conveniently-placed notes signed by "SF", presumably Splinter Cell protagonist Sam Fisher, and they describe what happened to him after the events of Far Cry 5. Turns out, he was on his way to find his daughter, Sarah, after the apocalypse, and he ruminates over the fact that the world needs survivors in this day and age. The notes also make references to Fisher's fellow Fourth Echelon agents Isaac Briggs, Anna Grímsdóttir, Andriy Kobin, and Charlie Cole.The icing on the cake is that you can find and switch on a Shadownet terminal within the plane, which that opens up a secret wall compartment, letting you retrieve a full Sam Fisher getup, complete with the iconic trifocal goggles, for use with your New Dawn character. The flavor text for the outfit pokes fun at the relentless enemy barks that the Splinter Cell series was infamous for: "Fisher's on the loose! I heard something, better not be Fisher. Fisher wouldn't try his luck here, would he? That'd be f***in' crazy! Fisher, Fisher, Fisher!"The last time we saw Sam Fisher in his own game was 2013's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, but this isn't the first time we've seen references to the series in a recent Ubisoft game. He made a cameo in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, which stirred up talks of a new game, which Ubisoft previously hinted at in 2017. Does this mean we should expect more from the series in the near future? Are the Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, and Far Cry universes all connected? Should we expect more Splinter Cell references in The Division 2?You'll be able to play through this Splinter Cell-themed Expedition when Far Cry: New Dawn launches on February 15, 2019 on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.Info from Gamespot.com

The first trailer for the J.R.R. Tolkien biopic starring Nicholas Hoult as the Lord of the Rings author has arrived. The short video gives us a first look at the film that will explore Tolkien's formative years and the journey and experiences that inspired him to write The Lord of the Rings.Tolkien was an orphan, and a significant part of his life was finding friends at school. He fought in World War I, and many of his friends died in battle. Tolkien survived, and it is said that Tolkien's time serving in the trenches inspired some of his ideas for Middle-earth. Another significant element of Tolkien's life and the movie is his romantic relationship with Edith Bratt, who is played by Lily Collins.The relationship between Tolkien and Bratt was supposedly the inspiration for Tolkien's Beren and Luthien story, which itself inspired the Aragorn-Arwen relationship in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series. Tolkien and Bratt share a gravestone, and on it they're referred to as Beren and Luthien.Tolkien hits theatres on May 10. It's directed by Dome Karukoski (Heart of Finland), based on script from David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford.In addition to this film, another one is in the works that focuses on the relationship between Tolkien and Narnia writer C.S. Lewis, and how Tolkien helped convert Lewis to Christianity.Outside of these, Amazon is producing a Lord of the Rings prequel TV show, while a massive Lord of the Rings art exhibit is opening in New York City. A new Lord of the Rings video game is also in the works, and it's said to have an online focus.Info from Gamespot.com

In 2017, following the tepid reception to Mass Effect: Andromeda, a report said that the Mass Effect franchise was put on ice. That may be the case, but now a pair of BioWare higher-ups have spoken about their eagerness to make more Mass Effect games ... someday.Mark Darrah, the executive producer Anthem and the Dragon Age series, told Polygon that BioWare is "definitely not done with Mass Effect."He said the Mass Effect universe is ripe with storytelling opportunities. "We could pull on the threads we put down with Andromeda; we could pull on threads from Mass Effect 3. There's a lot of interesting space to be explored."BioWare general manager Casey Hudson is also quoted in the piece. He said the Mass Effect franchise is "very much alive.""I'm thinking all the time about things that I think will be great. It's just a matter of getting back to it as soon as we can," he said.BioWare producer Michael Gamble weighed in on Twitter, saying BioWare is "of course" not finished making more Mass Effect games.Sources told Kotaku in 2017 that BioWare is giving the Mass Effect franchise a rest instead of getting to work right away on another game to follow Andromeda. That title was the first that BioWare Montreal served as lead developer on; the developer previously acted as a support studio for other BioWare projects.BioWare's next big game is the multiplayer shooter Anthem, which launches later this month for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. The studio is also working on a new Dragon Age game, and the first teaser can be seen here.Would you like to see more Mass Effect games? Let us know in the comments below! Info from Gamespot.com

On top of Ubisoft's ongoing PSN sale, a new selection of game deals are now available in the US PlayStation Store. Just as it has on Xbox this week, publisher Take-Two is offering deals on a range of games for PS4, PS3, and Vita--but they'll only be discounted for a limited time.On Sony's current-gen console, players can get both BioShock: The Collection and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection for $15 each. If you have a PSVR headset, you can purchase Borderlands 2 VR for $37.50. The acclaimed strategy game XCOM 2 is down to $15 as well, while its War of the Chosen expansion can be yours for $16.If sports games are more up your alley, the latest entry in Take-Two's annual wrestling series, WWE 2K19, is on sale for $19.80. Basketball fans can pick up NBA 2K19 for the same price ($19.80), while NBA 2K Playgrounds 2, a more arcadey take on the sport in the vein of NBA Jam, is down to $15.On the PS3 side, players can get the individual BioShock and Borderlands games for very cheap; BioShock and BioShock 2 are $4 each (as are Borderlands and its sequel), while BioShock Infinite and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel are $6 apiece. The critically acclaimed military shooter Spec Ops: The Line is down to $6 as well, as is XCOM: Enemy Within.You can see some other notable deals below; the full list can be found on the PlayStation Store. Much like the aforementioned Ubisoft sale, these deals will only be available until Friday, February 19, so you have until then to take advantage of the offers.This Week's PSN DealsPS4BioShock: The Collection -- $15Borderlands: The Handsome Collection -- $15Borderlands 2 VR -- $37.50Mafia III -- $10NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 -- $15NBA 2K19 -- $19.80WWE 2K19 -- $19.80XCOM 2 -- $15XCOM 2: War of the Chosen -- $16PS3BioShock -- $4BioShock 2 -- $4BioShock Infinite -- $6Borderlands -- $4Borderlands 2 -- $4Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel -- $6The Darkness 2 -- $8Duke Nukem Forever -- $4Mafia II -- $7.50Spec Ops: The Line -- $6XCOM: Enemy Within -- $6Info from Gamespot.com

As part of Activision Blizzard's earnings report today, the company discussed its decision to split off from Bungie on the development of the Destiny franchise. President and Chief Operating Officer Coddy Johnson started off by saying Activision Blizzard is "confident" that it was the right decision for both Activision Blizzard and Bungie to go separate ways. Describing the breakup as a "mutual, amicable" agreement, Johnson said the deal is the "right path forward" for each entity. "Bungie gets to focus on the [Destiny IP] that they have created and we get to focus on our biggest opportunities on our biggest franchises with our best resources," Johnson said. "Our decision was reached with mutual agreement with Bungie to sell back the commercial rights. And for us at least, it was rooted in really our strategy overall."When Activision Blizzard and Bungie originally signed their 10-year publishing deal for Destiny back in 2010, one key component of the agreement was that Bungie would get to retain ownership of the Destiny IP. By comparison, Activision Blizzard owns the IP for its other major franchises such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. There are a number of benefits to owning an IP, Johnson said."We did not own the underlying Destiny IP, and we do for all of our other major franchises, which we think is not just a differentiator for us in the industry," he said. "But also controlling the underlying IP gives us the chance to move in with new experiences and new engagement models which also come with new revenue streams and, structurally, higher economics when you own the IP."Also during the call, Johnson said Activision Blizzard wanted to break up with Bungie because the Destiny franchise was failing to meet its commercial projections. "Destiny is highly critically acclaimed, high quality content, but it was not meeting our financial expectations," he said.Specifically, Activision Blizzard said previously that Destiny 2: Forsaken failed to sell up to the company's expectations, though Bungie asserted that it wasn't disappointed with the game.When Activision Blizzard management conducted a financial review for 2019, the company saw signs that indicated Destiny would not be a "material contributor" to the company's profit. Not only that, but Activision Blizzard assigned some of its own studios, including High Moon Studios and Vicarious Visions, to assist Bungie in developing Destiny content faster. "[Bungie was] tying up one of our scarcest resources--developer talent," Johnson said.While High Moon and Vicarious Visions will continue to work with Bungie on Destiny content for a "transition period," they will be freed up after this to work on other Activision projects. Earlier today, Activision Blizzard said it plans to increase the number of developers working on games like Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Overwatch, Warcraft, Hearthstone, and Diablo by about 20 percent in aggregate over the course of 2019. It could be that High Moon and Vicarious Visions shift some of their efforts to these projects, but that hasn't been confirmed at this stage.Finally, Johnson offered a brief timeline of events that led up to Activision Blizzard parting ways with Bungie and the Destiny series. He said that Activision Blizzard learned in November, after its earnings report, that Bungie wanted to get out of the publishing deal. This deal was done in late-December, Johnson said, before it was ultimately announced in early January.The bigger Activision Blizzard news today is that the company is cutting around eight percent of its workforce in a layoff round that could affect 800 people or more. Info from Gamespot.com

If Apex Legends has one thing going for it, it's the feeling that the game is complete--something not all battle royale games can boast. The explosion of popularity in the genre means there are a lot of games that do last-player-standing competition pretty well, but with some kinks. Some existing shooters are adding battle royale modes to their offerings, fitting their existing gameplay into a new framework; other battle royale games are constantly struggling to work out bugs, kinks, and balancing issues; and still others started life as something else and managed to retrofit their ideas the battle royale mold, with some fitting better than others.Meanwhile, Apex Legends focuses on doing one thing extremely well. That thing is team competition in the BR genre; at launch, it only includes a team-based mode where 20 groups of three players square off against each other. Everything in Apex Legends works to further teamwork: that includes a number of improvements to issues that plague the whole genre, like cleaning up inventory management and increasing accessibility, and the addition of new ideas, like squad composition elements and special character abilities.Apex Legends excels by combining good ideas that have worked in shooters before. The battle royale ruleset is the same as in similar games, with very few changes: Teams skydive onto a huge island with nothing and scramble to gather up weapons and items to use against any other teams they encounter until only one team survives. While there are no titans or wall-running, it's still possible to see the bones of Titanfall 2 undergirding Apex, which reuses Titanfall's weapons and some of its fluid movement mechanics, like sliding and mantling. But the core of the formula here is the tight, three-player squad structure, which all the other pieces benefit.Another big change to the battle royale formula in Apex Legends is one extremely similar to what Blizzard brought to multiplayer FPS games in Overwatch. At the start of each match, each player chooses one of eight characters, each with specific abilities that serve specific roles. The defensive Gibraltar can drop a shield and call in an airstrike to drive another team back; the offensive Wraith can create portals between two locations and briefly disappear to avoid damage; the supportive Pathfinder uses grappling hooks and ziplines to help the team reach areas where they might have a tactical advantage.It all plays back into the focus on teamwork, since no character is especially powerful, and no abilities are useful all the time. You're not a lone wolf--instead, you have a specific role that complements teammates as you play, and that works to help find a new side of battle royale that hasn't been explored before.Moment-to-moment, though, what's remarkable about Apex Legends is that it just works. Battle royale is a bit of an obtuse genre with a lot of moving parts; in most games, you find weapons, gun attachments, armor, healing items, and more. You'll spend lots of time digging in menus to manage inventory. Apex streamlines all of that with user interface tweaks that make it possible to instantly identify what you need and ignore the things you don't. Ammo types are color-coded to the guns that use them. Attachments automatically join with guns they fit and swap to appropriate new guns when you pick them up, while things you can't use or don't improve your gear are brightly marked as such. It's an even more accessible version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's battle royale improvements with its Blackout mode, and the rest of the genre should adopt it.The best feature in Apex Legends is its extremely robust "ping" system, which lets you press a button to create a marker on your teammates' screens. The ping system is super smart--aim it at a gun or a helmet and your character will identify that object's location to everyone else. You can ping in your menu to call for things you need, mark places you want to go, or identify spots other players have passed through. Most importantly, you can use pings to mark enemy locations. The system is so responsive and well-implemented in Apex Legends that it can fully replace talking to your team at all. In fact, the accuracy of a ping on-screen can often be better at helping you quickly convey information than talking.A revival system also helps you get more engaged with your team. If a teammate falls in battle and is knocked out of the match, you can recover their banner, an item that drops with their loot, and use it to respawn them into the game as if they just started. The system adds some intense, harrowing strategy to Apex that requires you to risk everything to save your squad; you can only call back dead teammates at specific, single-use Respawn Beacons on the map, but you're completely exposed while doing so. Pull off a clutch play, though, and you can bring your team back from the brink. The system provides a great incentive to stay in matches and keep talking to and aiding your team, instead of just leaving when you die to join another match.Like in Respawn's previous games, shooting here is hefty and satisfying, and Apex sports a wide variety of cool guns to learn and master. However, gunplay sometimes gets held back because lots guns carry strangely small magazines. Players have a lot of health, which gets increased greatly with the addition of armor, so it often takes a lot of shots to take people down. Ideally, you're always shooting someone with the help of a pal, but the small magazines have the effect of making you feel underpowered alone. In most matches I've played, shotguns get the most use from players because they have the highest likelihood of actually taking down an opponent, while many of the other guns spray bullets too much and leave you vulnerable as you reload and reload and reload.Apex Legends is a mix of smart shooter ideas that makes for a competitive, team-based game that gets at all the best parts of battle royale while addressing a lot of the weaknesses.As a free-to-play game, Apex Legends includes both loot boxes and in-game items that can be purchased with real money, and loot boxes can also be earned by playing. Everything on offer is cosmetic, much like in Fortnite or Overwatch, so paying money isn't essential to playing the game and staying competitive, and you can largely ignore microtransactions if you aren't interested in paying.The one place Apex Legends' microtransactions can irritate is in trying to unlock new characters. At launch, six characters are available for free, with two that can be unlocked either with paid or earned currency. Neither is essential--they offer different abilities but not better or worse ones--but as an average player, it still took me around 17 hours of play to earn enough currency to buy one character (it'll be shorter if you get more kills and more wins). With Respawn adding more characters to the game in the future, it's fully possible trying to unlock new characters will become a slog that turns off casual players and those unwilling or unable to pay.Apex Legends is a mix of smart shooter ideas that makes for a competitive, team-based game that gets at all the best parts of battle royale while addressing a lot of the weaknesses. Respawn's intense focus on team play makes Apex more than just a worthy addition to the genre; it's an indicator of where battle royale should go in the future.Info from Gamespot.com

Civilization VI told a straightforward story of the consequences of your actions. Fail to keep your people happy and they would put down their hammers and raise pitchforks. Be rude to the other leaders and they would soon refuse to deal with you. Beyond that, however, you could go about building your empire mostly unconcerned with any repercussions to your decisions. Last year's Rise and Fall expansion added some complexity to the tale with the introduction of its Loyalty mechanic. Operating in isolation was no longer possible. Settlements on the fringes of an empire could, if they liked what they saw across the border, decide to rebel. Players who took their citizens' loyalty for granted would find themselves leading no one.This kind of accountability is extended in multiple directions with Gathering Storm, the second major expansion for Civ VI. Through the institution of a World Congress, Gathering Storm lets leaders reward and punish each other for certain actions, allow them to pass sweeping resolutions that affect every civilization, and ultimately secure their diplomatic favor. And with its new World Climate system, Gathering Storm makes you accountable to the world itself by hitting you--sometimes painfully hard--with the calamitous consequences of exploiting the map's rich resources.Your path to victory in Civ VI was predictable once you'd established the foundation of your empire by the Modern Era, but the new World Congress and World Climate systems add enough dynamism to keep you working right up to the new Future Era. Gathering Storm encourages you to “play the map," taking advantage of the surrounding resources, and then adapt the repercussions of your decisions reflected on that map. As an expansion focused on consequences, however, it can take some time for the new stuff to make its presence felt.The World Climate system is the most meaningful change, but it doesn't really kick in until you've started extracting strategic resources like coal and oil. Early on you'll encounter floods, hurricanes, blizzards, and endure the odd drought or volcanic eruption. These weather events pass in a couple of turns, potentially reducing your population, injuring units and pillaging improvements, but they can also fertilize tiles to reward you with greater yields in future.But weather is not climate. Once you start burning coal and oil to fuel both the power plants in your industrial districts and the battleships and tanks that comprise your military force, you start pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. As those emissions rise, tallied by the new World Climate report that tracks the cumulative contributions of each civ and resource, the world will progress through up to seven phases of climate change. Sea levels will rise, at first flooding coastal tiles and eventually leaving many of them completely underwater. Weather events will increase in both frequency and severity, simultaneously desiccating your farmlands through drought and ravaging your cities with tornadoes.The choices you're forced to make here are difficult and meaningful. Resources like coal and oil are powerful and refusing to exploit them will cede an immediate advantage to any rival. Through the Industrial and Modern Eras they fuel the most effective units in your navy and army. Do you really want to rely on defending your homeland with frigates while the enemy has ironclads? Further, consumable fuel resources are the first ways you're able to power your cities. A concept debuting in Gathering Storm, powering a city--say, via a coal power plant--boosts the yields of various districts and buildings. Can you really afford to let your research labs and stock exchanges sit idle while your coal-guzzling neighbor is sprinting ahead in the science race?Later you're able to develop methods of harvesting renewable energy resources such as wind and solar farms, but by the time you're able to deploy them, you may find yourself lagging too far behind a less eco-friendly rival or, worse, suffering the consequences of irreversible damage to the planet. Helping to mitigate such destruction and preserving the natural environment will slow down the effects of climate change. This forces new, perplexing early game decisions. Chopping down that nearby rainforest will give a quick boost to producing a settler, but leaving it untouched may mean future settlers will live to see a world that still has air to breathe. Before Gathering Storm, this wasn't a choice--you chopped for the short-term gain because there were no long-term consequences. Now, every decision is purposeful. Now, every tile in your empire is asking: "Are you sure you want to do that?"The World Congress is slightly less successful at providing new and meaningful choices than the World Climate system. What it does, though, is make you far more aware of what other leaders are up to. Once the congress convenes, from the Medieval Era onwards, you'll find yourself voting on various resolutions every 30 turns. You might be asked to vote on boosting or banning certain types of great people, or whether trade routes to particular civs or city-states should receive bonuses. You don't just get one vote; instead, you can spend a new form of currency called Diplomatic Favor to vote as many times as you can afford. Favors can also be traded with other leaders, just like any resource, meaning diplomatic players will need to give away valuable luxuries or strategic resources in order to fully exert their influence on the World Congress.In theory, these resolutions should enable the diplomatic player to tip the scales in their favor. In practice, though, their effects aren't transformative. You might get an extra trade route here, a slightly slower Great Engineer there, but nothing that feels game-changing. The randomness doesn't help--if you could propose a resolution rather than merely voting on the ones that pop up that would provide a better return on the investment.More compelling are the choices to be made around actually pursuing the new Diplomatic Victory, awarded to the leader who first reaches 10 Diplomatic Victory points. You're still essentially voting your way to the top, but you're also competing with other leaders to send the most aid to another civ recently devastated by floods, for instance, or to generate the most great people points to win the Nobel Prize. Diplomatic Favor is also earned via alliances with other civs and becoming the suzerain of a city-state, so the Diplomatic Victory is genuinely a case of demonstrating you can lead the world.These are the two biggest new features in this add-on, but Gathering Storm also includes countless smaller tweaks that in combination with the above make it an essential purchase for Civ VI fans. There are new World Wonders to build, such as the Great Bath or the University Sankore. There are new Natural Wonders, new military units to fill in the gaps between eras, and nine new leaders, including the series' first-ever dual-nationality leader (Eleanor of Aquitaine can represent either England or France).Thoughtfully, the new leaders are balanced between those that are clearly geared towards Gathering Storm's prominent additions--Kristina of Sweden is all about winning diplomatic favor while the unique abilities of Kupe, the Maori leader, incentivize leaving untouched as much of the natural world as possible--and those who embrace some previously overlooked facet of the game. In the latter camp, Matthias Corvinus heads a Hungarian empire whose military force is best composed of units levied from allied city-states, while in the Inca, lead by Pachacuti, we finally have a civ that wants lots of mountain tiles throughout its lands.Gathering Storm is overall a great expansion, ushering in two significant new systems that work hand in hand to deepen the experience. The embellished diplomatic options extend the range of interactions with other leaders, allowing you to work cooperatively towards common goals or pull the strings to your advantage behind the scenes. While the introduction of climate change delivers new strategic choices whose consequences resonate ever-more-loudly as you advance throughout the eras. It isn't simply more Civ, it's a whole new way to play Civ.Info from Gamespot.com

Since its debut at E3 2018, the developers behind the The Division 2 have focused on the sequel's endgame. It's a recurring topic for many online looter-shooters such as Destiny and Anthem, as it's often seen as the make-or-break point for a game's long term success. That's something the developers of the original Division know all too well. Players who finished its vanilla campaign inevitably hit a slump, leading to a repetitive cycle. Ubisoft eventually overhauled much of the game's mechanics and added in new encounters--leading to an impressive post-launch life for The Division. However, many players still burned out by the original release missed out on the revival once other games came around.With the sequel, Ubisoft is taking steps to ensure that it won't fall into the same traps as the original, while also giving the campaign a greater sense of purpose. We recently spent some time getting an early look at the game's upcoming private beta--playable February 7-10--which offers a tease for what's to come in the early hours of the campaign and the late-game content that follows. After you've established yourself in The Division 2's turbulent setting of post-outbreak Washington D.C. during the campaign, things take a more chaotic turn after the conclusion, forcing you to defend what you've built up in the expanded endgame.During this event, the developers spent some time reflecting on what they learned from the original game and detailed their approach in the sequel."One of the biggest things for The Division 2 is the importance of the endgame and our focus on it," said creative director Julian Gerighty. "We launched The Division 1 with very little in terms of endgame content. It was a great campaign, you reached level 30, the endgame started, but it was lacking in activities. We were trying to operate this live game, yet we saw things that weren't working out for the long term. That's why a very tough decision was made before patch 1.4, which was to stop the development on all of the planned features and the DLCs to be able to focus on the technological debt and on the improvements to get the game to where we wanted it to be. That all fed into how we've set up The Division 2 production-wise, creatively as well."The Division 1 is a vastly different game now than it was at launch, and all for the better. That second wind is something that the developers wanted to carry over into the sequel, which they did in a few important ways. For starters, The Division 2 will incorporate much of the existing game's content from the post-launch updates, which includes update 1.2's bounties, 1.4's world tiers, 1.6's exotic weapons, and 1.8's PvP arena. These features will also be available for all players at launch, and future DLCs for the first year will be free. This is not only to stay consistent with the current game's flow and meta but also to ensure that the community would stay engaged.With the new game, there also comes a fresh start for all players. Whereas the original was set in Manhattan, Division 2 brings a new set of agents to the nation's capital, which introduces new systems and world events that occur in the field--presenting more moments and opportunities to leave a large footprint. At the beginning of the demo, our first mission was to retake the White House from one of the opposing factions, which becomes your base of operations soon after.Over the course of the campaign, the White House increases in influence and followers the more you expand the Agency's reach throughout Washington D.C. In order to reassert control over the city, you'll set up new settlements and interact with key characters who will aid in your rise to power. Some NPCs are recruitable and can even be brought to the White House to upgrade the various areas--leading to new items and perks to acquire.Exploring ruined D.C. offered plenty of opportunities to meet new characters and come across control points that are in constant dispute. Though D.C. doesn't have nearly as strong of an atmosphere and eerie vibe as the original, it does fill that void by presenting more reasons to explore and engage in the various side-missions. Much like in the original, there are ECHOs that allow you to play back moments from the lives of supporting characters. While the original's take felt one-sided since the characters were dead long before you arrived, several of the persons of interest in The Division 2 are alive and reasonably well, and the ECHOs offer more details about their connections to others throughout D.C.Things, however, take a particularly surprising turn in the endgame. A new threat in the form of Black Tusk emerges, leading into the broader endgame that shakes things up. Similar to the Hunters from The Division's 1.8 update, who only appeared in the Survival mode and Underground DLC, Black Tusk is a roaming faction that serves as the antithesis of the Division agency. Possessing an arsenal of high-tech weapons and gadgets that match your own, this new faction invades D.C. and actively tries to retake areas of the city--and even the Dark Zones. In the two endgame missions we played, one in the Air and Space Museum and along with the Federal Emergency Bunker, the Black Tusk proved to be a powerful force to be reckoned with. Along with using robots that look like they come right out of the Boston Dynamics lab--except they actually have guns this time--the endgame faction also uses mini-drones, and have soldiers wearing heavy armor that require strategic shots to open up weak points.During the endgame, you'll unlock new specializations that further enhance your character, which also open up power weapons like the grenade launcher, heavy sniper rifle, and the crossbow. In order to find better loot and gear, you'll have to tackle missions that are several notches more challenging than the campaign. But as is typically the case for endgame content, you'll also be repeating some older missions. The Division 2 does, however, spice things up by introducing a new tier called Invaded missions. During the endgame, all previous missions from the campaign will have a new difficulty that replaces the existing enemies with the Black Tusk. To cut down on repetition, the Invaded missions will also randomize each encounter with Black Tusk in the level, leading to different fights with enemy squads on each playthrough.This new faction also changes the dynamic of the Dark Zones in the endgame, which actively occupies one of the areas. As we detailed in another preview, the Dark Zone's PvPvE (player-versus-player-versus-environment) dynamic has been upgraded for the sequel. In addition to three separate zones, all of which have story missions that allow you to get your feet wet, the endgame will introduce an Occupied Dark Zone. With one Dark Zone under occupation by the Black Tusk faction, which cycles to a different location every week, the occupied zones also remove certain handicaps from the base version of the PvPvE mode, particularly level-balancing and friendly fire.The skirmishes with Black Tusk during the two missions we played were intense and required some solid communication from our team to make it through. However, the invaded missions also felt a bit exhausting as well, leading to some moments where we were trapped in a room for up to 10 minutes dropping squads of bullet-spongy enemies as they funneled in. Though this is often the case for endgame content, it definitely hurt the pacing of some otherwise thrilling missions. Granted, we were just dropped into these missions for the purpose of this demo, which came after the rather brisk early game missions we played at the beginning. They may flow better once you've invested the hours to work your way to this content.However, this also reminded me of some of the larger issues I've felt from The Division 2, in that it comes off a bit too similar to the original. It strongly emulates much of what worked in its predecessor, almost to a fault. Though some of the new innovations make for a more engaging and interesting setting to explore, the general looter-shooter loop itself can be exhausting, and lead to those familiar moments of occasional tedium that bogged down the first game. Having said that, I do feel the new approach to the endgame, though somewhat overwhelming, does offer a more compelling hook that felt absent from the original. By tasking you to defend the place you've been actively building up and investing yourself in throughout the campaign--which can be taken by the enemy faction. It creates a greater sense of urgency in the late-game, which was lacking from the original.Ubisoft seems to be on the right path for The Division 2. Though it's obviously building off of what came before, the new features do seem to be a natural step up that plays to the renewed strength the series saw with its revamped gameplay from the original. Ubisoft's approach with this private beta was a neat way to kick the tires from both ends, and it'll be interesting to see how players--even those that missed out on the revival of the original game--will take to it. The Division 2 is series' second chance, and hopefully it'll be able to make good on it's renewed vigor.For more info on The Division 2, including how the new Dark Zones work and how to get into the private beta, you can check out our features and articles on here on GameSpot.Info from Gamespot.com